Abstract:

As the market competition is getting more and more fierce locally and globally, many companies try to find new ways of attracting specifically targeted customers through their products and packaging. Many consumer goods companies invest and put a great deal of effort into research to better understand these targeted consumers. Research results provide data that normally provides a foundation that forms a brief for designers.

Unfortunately these more traditional and favoured methods of constructing a brief have some shortcomings with regards to limitation of conveying valuable findings and are potentially hindering the process for designers and design teams to work effectively. As a result, many essential factors that could be important for the design task might be left out in the process of constructing and delivering the brief.

This thesis explores how a designer could play a key stakeholders role in creating a brief at the early stages of the development through the case study of a packaging development process. The case study was done for Fazer, which is the leading confectionery company in Finland. The focus was to explore briefing processes and to utilise ‘co-creation’ as a tool to gather insights from targeted consumers. By doing so, a designer can use the insights to develop a design brief together with a client. Eventually this study presents the process of using co-creation and co-design methods to create a design brief for a packaging design assignment.